Our holiday in Egypt

What a wonderful holiday – just what we needed: Sun, sand, sea, corals, a lot of fish and no stress at all.

Wolf, Mike, Albert and I have just arrived back from a week at Utopia Beach in Egypt. It's the fourth time we've spent our holiday in Egypt and we love it because snorkelling in the Red Sea is something we both absolutely adore. Watching the coral landscapes and the masses of colourful fish is the best therapy in the world for us – it's fascinating and exciting seeing species new to us.

As our last three years Egyptian holiday was spent in Makadi Bay we decided to try somewhere different this time for a comparison. Utopia Beach is about 200 kilometres south from Hurghada and about 65 kilometres north from Marsa Alam airport. Apart from one other Hotel next to ours and one about three kilometres away there was virtually nothing in the near, which is ideal for us as we neither need nor want the hustle and bustle of cities while we're on holiday.

Our Hotel

Our hotel was called the Utopia Beach Club and was very pretty with sandstone walls and crazy paving walkways. Being only a three star hotel the rooms were very basic but large and clean with a good balcony looking out over the sea. The air conditioning was very loud but kept the room cool – a necessity in the heat we experienced. In the midday sun it was definitely over 45°C.

A small mix up with the rooms at the beginning meant that we were at first sent over to the neighbouring hotel, The Pensee Royal Gardens - a five star hotel, and there we were given the plastic "all-inclusive" bracelets. That meant that although we were staying at the Utopia we were able to go over to the Pensee for meals if we wished – which we often did as the restaurant was much better!

A little niggle

As far as the hotel is concerned one of the few things that weren’t so good was the fact that each evening was designated to the most awful disco – or worse…Karaoke! Not only was it the worst of music, it was also very loud, blaring out across the hotel grounds. That’s where the sound level of the air conditioning came in handy, as was possible to drone out the sound of the disco! The French guests seemed to enjoy it though, which made us wonder at their taste in entertainment.

Another small irritation was the lack of sunloungers on the part of the beach in front of our hotel. As our only wish was to spend the days at the beach, snorkelling whenever we wished, it was annoying not to have the necessary loungers and shade. We soon noticed that many guests were up early in the morning bagging the loungers, so, against our principles, we too decided to get to the beach early and reserve our loungers for the day. Some guests had obviously tipped the staff at the beach to reserve places every day so I did not feel too guilty about our actions.

Happiness is....

So we happily spent our days at the beach and snorkelled to our hearts' content.
The coral reefs at Utopia are really indescribably fantastic. Not having so many tourists trampling on them, they are quite intact, although to our dismay we did see several people (or rather idiots) standing on the corals breaking them. Nevertheless, we saw wonderful underwater landscapes and hundreds of fish.

Listing them all would take far too long, but my new species for this year were Napoleon fish (a little one) and Eagle Rays. We also swam with a giant turtle. The fish at Utopia beach didn't seem shy at all and we could spend ages studying them close up. Albert did some underwater filming but although the film is good, it doesn’t quite portray the sharp, colourful beauty of it all.
We were in the water for hours but it never fails to fascinate us.

Hot

The heat was amazing and also exhausting. I adore the sun but the midday heat was even too much for me at times. The sea was extremely warm too, and shallow water had a temperature of almost 40°c at times. In fact there was no jumping into the sea to cool off – it felt like a hot bath at times! Luckily there was mostly a breeze blowing all day, which was refreshing, but in the evening there was no wind at all. Although Albert and I are usually night owls, staying up until all hours in the night, we could hardly keep our eyes open after dinner in the evening.
We discovered though, that there was a staircase to the roof of our hotel apartment block (it was only two stories) and so a couple of times we lay up there watching the sky. That may sound uninteresting but the nights were so clear we could see the Milky Way galaxy and several shooting stars. It was very romantic.

Great boys, great fun

Having the two boys to ourselves for a change was a very pleasant experience. They have been through a lot recently and Albert and I have been extremely busy in the last few months, so it was good to give them some quality time. The two get on really well together and have similar interests – it was wonderfully harmonious. We had great conversations and laughs each evening at dinner and afterwards, when Albert and I just flopped with exhaustion from the heat, Wolf and Mike happily played billiards together, or practised their English or French with the other guests. Both boys love snorkelling too and were interested in everything they had seen.
They both certainly helped make the holiday more memorable.

Wolf and I went on a two-hour horse-riding excursion early one evening, along the beach and into the desert. It was great fun and we had a few exhilarating gallops. Apart from once last year (also in Egypt) I hadn't ridden a horse for over twenty years and I have to admit that I could hardly sit down for two days!

Quad-riding

Albert, Mike and I also took a quad (four-wheel beach buggy) ride into the desert to have tea with a Bedouin group. Unfortunately Wolf was feeling unwell and couldn't join us, a real shame as he would have loved it. Riding the quads was enormous fun and when we stopped at the Bedouin camp we all climbed a steep hill to watch the sun set over the desert mountains. It was a most impressive sight – miles and miles of almost nothing but sand.

Seeing the Bedouin people and how they live was more of a humbling experience. I think Mike was quite shocked to see for real that some people do live without electricity, television, play station and computers – without brick walls and a front door for that matter.

We had met up with another group of about twenty quad riders at the Bedouin camp and after the cup of tea we all set off in convoy to ride back to the hotel. By then it was dark and the quad lights were on and, being at the front of the convoy of about thirty or more quads, I could look back and see a long line of lights snaking across the desert. We thoroughly enjoyed it all.

More memories

Our week was over far too quickly and so we had to fly back to the cold North, but at least we have our memories – and photographs - of a lovely holiday.